Etymology

belated

be·lat·ed
B3E1L1A1T1E1D2

Today it means: Affected or overtaken by the lateness of the time; hence, synonym of benighted (“overtaken by night; caught out by oncoming night before reaching one's destination”). Full definition →

English belate ← Middle English bi- ← Old English be-
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*h₁ep-
  2. Proto-Indo-European*h₁éps
  3. Proto-Indo-European*h₁épi
  4. Proto-Indo-European*h₁pi
  5. Proto-Germanic*bi
  6. Proto-Germanic*bi-
  7. Proto-West Germanic*bi-
  8. Old Englishbe-
  9. Middle Englishbi-
  10. Englishbe-
  11. Englishlate
  12. Englishbelate
  13. English todaybelated

From belate (verb) + -ed (suffix forming adjectives, and past tense and past participle forms of regular verbs).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.